In Memoriam: Pete Seeger

On view is a photograph of American musician and social activist Pete Seeger (1919-2014) taken by Sid Grossman in the late 1940s. Seeger recorded more than 100 albums during his career, which spanned labor rallies in the 1930s and 1940s, anti-McCarthyism in the 1950s, the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements of the 1960s, and the Occupy Wall Street campaign of 2011. His songs include the civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome and the antiwar song Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. In 1950 he organized the Weavers, whose hit Goodnight, Irene reached number one on the charts. Blacklisted for his leftist politics in the 1950s, Seeger resurfaced in the 1960s and sparked a folk revival with such classics as If I Had a Hammer, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? and Turn! Turn! Turn!